Giving back marked the life of late American cellist and teacher Bernard Greenhouse. The internationally acclaimed artist and founding member of the Beaux Arts Trio - considered the pre-eminent piano trio for decades - left behind a legacy not only in the music world but also in his community of Wellfleet.

On Sunday, that legacy will both be honored and continued as part of “Play it Forward: The Legacy of Bernard Greenhouse,” a benefit concert for the Outer Cape Health Services. Proceeds from the event, set to feature performances by cellist Inbal Segev and pianist Noreen Cassidy-Polera, will support the rebuilding of the Wellfleet Health Center, a place close to Greenhouse's heart.

Greenhouse, along with his wife Aurora, helped establish the Association for Improving Medical Resources of the Outer Cape (AIM). The AIM clinic in Wellfleet became the first health center known today as the Outer Cape Health Services, now located in Provincetown, Wellfleet and Harwich. These community health centers serve the eight towns of the Outer Cape, and the medical clinic in Wellfleet provided health care to Greenhouse and Aurora throughout the time they lived in the town.

“As the primary source of health care for the towns of Eastham, Wellfleet and Truro, the OCHS Wellfleet facility is a critical resource for the local communities as well as thousands of summer visitors,” says Jim Hood, site director for the Wellfleet OCHS, in an email interview.

Greenhouse, Hood says, recognized that the facility that had housed OCHS since its establishment in 1966 was small and outdated. Beginning in 2005 and continuing until his death at age 95 in 2011, Greenhouse was the “driving force” behind the “Bernie Greenhouse and Friends” annual concerts held in Wellfleet to support the rebuilding of the Wellfleet Health Center.

“The 'Bernie Greenhouse and Friends' annual concert was his vision for developing the support necessary to build a larger, modern health center and insure state-of-the-art medical care on the Outer Cape,” Hood says.

Greenhouse was a founding member of The Beaux Arts Trio in 1955, and performed with the group (which disbanded in 2008) for more than 30 years. He continued playing and teaching into his 90s, according to his obituary.

According to Hood, the concerts he sponsored have raised more than $180,000 to date toward the project. The concerts, he adds, are also meant to continue Greenhouse's legacy by inviting former and much-acclaimed cellists who have studied with him to perform.

This year, that cellist is Segev. The Israeli-American musician, who studied with Greenhouse on and off for eight years, met Greenhouse in Germany during her first year at The Juilliard School in New York City. He invited her to come stay in Wellfleet and study with him, and she dropped out of Juilliard to accept (she would later complete her degree at the prestigious school).

“I just felt that he was the right teacher for me,” Segev says in a phone interview. Segev went on to spend two winters in Wellfleet with Greenhouse - staying at one of his cottages with another student. It's a time she now refers to as “one of the best musical experiences I've ever had.”

“I admire him as a cellist and teacher,” Segev says, “and he really taught me a lot.” When she met Greenhouse, Segev says, she was at a point in her career at which she felt her sound needed refining. Greenhouse helped her do so and taught her how to communicate with an audience. He also genuinely cared about the music he was teaching, which Segev appreciated.

“It was just about music,” she says. “There (were) no politics or career. Nothing of that was in the lessons. ... It was just really pure work.”

She also grew to admire Greenhouse as a person. He was “extremely generous,” Segev says, never charging her - or many other students of his - for lessons. She grew close to Greenhouse and came to see him as a father figure, a presence she lacked growing up with a single mother.

So when Segev – who now regularly performs chamber music all over the country and Europe and as a soloist with orchestras around the world – was approached to perform at “Play it Forward,” she says she was “delighted” to get the opportunity.

Accompanying Segev on piano during Sunday's concert will be Cassidy-Polera, a highly regarded and diverse chamber artist. Throughout her career, Cassidy-Polera has performed in major American music centers and around the world, including in Europe, Russia and Asia. She has performed with the Chamber Music Societies of Philadelphia and La Jolla and collaborated with leading soloists, including Yo-Yo Ma. Sam Ericsson, a local cellist, will open the show.

In choosing the pieces she will perform on Sunday, Segev says she had Greenhouse in mind.

Beethoven's third sonata, which she'll play, is one she studied extensively with Greenhouse. Segev will start her program with Ernest Bloch's “Three Pieces from Jewish Life,” which she thought Greenhouse taught particularly well, especially in how he brought out the “core” of the music. Greenhouse was a student of Pablo Casals - who Segev says is considered one of the best cellists who ever lived - so performing a Casals piece, “Song of the Birds,” seemed fitting to her.

Bach's Suite for solo cello in D minor, BWV 1008, is another piece Segev will perform and also one she is currently in the process of recording. Segev recorded all of her lessons with Greenhouse on the suite and has recently been listening to the tapes.

“It's bittersweet,” she says, “because he gave me so much in terms of the cello, and now he's not here anymore. I miss him a lot, and I'm sure a lot of other people do, too.”

She hopes to share a bit of Greenhouse on Sunday. “I hope people can get (a sense of) warmth through my playing and some of his (Greenhouse's) humanity,” Segev says. “I hope some of it rubbed off on me, and I hope I can pass it along for the listeners to enjoy.”